The Professional Agile Leader: Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations

The Professional Agile Leader: Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations

by Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner, Laurens Bonnema
Released June 2022
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780137591558

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Book description

Hone Your Agile Leadership Skills to Help Your Organization Transform and Thrive

“Drawing on vast experience, Ron, Kurt, and Laurens tease out practical tips and patterns for good leadership [and show] how a leader can help shape the environment for agile teams to succeed. . . . The narrative style of the book makes it easy to read, and I am sure there will be many times that you see yourself in it.”

–From the Foreword by Dave West, CEO and Product Owner, Scrum.org

To leverage the immense opportunities associated with accelerating change, organizations need teams capable of trying new ideas quickly, learning from their experiences, and adapting based on that learning. Helping these teams to grow and thrive requires agile leaders who support, inspire, and encourage, and who can leave behind the management skills of directing, monitoring, and rewarding or punishing.

The Professional Agile Leader is a realistic, practical guide, written by experienced agile leaders who share their collective experiences in helping agile leaders to grow responsive and adaptive teams. They structure powerful lessons around a case study based on decades of experience helping agile leaders achieve and sustain agile transformation. Best of all, they never settle for high-level hand-waving–they show you how it’s really done.

  • Reignite once-successful organizations that have lost their way

  • Form cross-functional teams and empower them with purpose

  • Learn to let go, as your teams start taking more responsibility

  • Overcome forces that want to reel you back into the “old rules”

  • Realign the whole organization, since agile and traditional models can’t coexist forever

  • Achieve the most challenging goal of all: changing culture

Great agile leaders aren’t born that way–they’re regular people who care deeply about helping others achieve shared goals and have discovered a better way to lead. Whatever your role in the organization, this guide will help you master those skills and mindsets a whole lot faster.

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Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. About This eBook
  3. Halftitle Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Pearson’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  7. Contents
  8. Foreword
  9. Preface
  10. Introduction
    1. Purpose of This Book
    2. Who Should Read This Book
    3. How This Book Is Organized
  11. Acknowledgments
  12. About the Authors
  13. 1. An Organization at a Crossroads
    1. Complex Challenges Create Urgency for Agility
    2. Reducing Dependencies Makes Change Possible
    3. Not Everyone May Need to Change, at Least at First
    4. Two Paths, One Goal
    5. Reflections on the Journey
  14. 2. Forming Teams and Discovering Purpose
    1. Changing the Organization, One Team at a Time
    2. Finding the Right People
    3. Empowering Teams
    4. Placing the Customer at the Center of the Change
    5. Reflections on the Journey
  15. 3. Shifting from Output to Impact
    1. “What Gets Measured Gets Done”
    2. Reflections on the Journey
  16. 4. Learning to Let Go
    1. Empowerment Doesn’t Come for Free
    2. Agile Leaders Help Teams to Grow Their Ability to Reach Audacious Goals
    3. Letting Go in Small Steps
    4. Slow Decision-Making Kills TeamSelf-Management
    5. Reflections on the Journey
  17. 5. The Predictable Existential Crisis
    1. New Ways of Working Threaten the Old System
    2. Reflections on the Journey
  18. 6. Leaders, Everywhere
    1. Nurturing and Growing an Agile Organization
    2. Reward Building Teams and Leadership, Not Silos
    3. Promotional Rewards Lock in Organizational Structures
    4. Performance Reviews Don’t Go Away, but They Do Change Dramatically
    5. Reflections on the Journey
  19. 7. Aligning the Organization
    1. Evolving the Operating Model
    2. Scale Agility by Removing Dependencies
    3. Consolidating Support and Eliminating Opposition
    4. Realign Compensation Plans
    5. Realign Career Paths
    6. Embrace Catalytic Leadership
    7. Replace Status Meetings with Transparency
    8. Be Realistic About How Long the Transition Will Take, and What It Means
    9. Reflections on the Journey
  20. 8. Aligning the Culture
    1. What Makes Changing Culture Hard
    2. Agile Leaders Must First Find Their Own Way
    3. Build Bridges to the New Culture
    4. Anticipate and Overcome Setbacks
    5. Use “Self-Sustenance” as a Measure of Success
    6. Agile Journeys Never Really End
    7. Reflections on the Journey
  21. A. Patterns and Anti-Patterns for Effective Leadership
  22. B. Doreen’s Sketchnotes
  23. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Professional Agile Leader: Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations
  • Author(s): Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner, Laurens Bonnema
  • Release date: June 2022
  • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
  • ISBN: 9780137591558